Tag: 9:12
Engadget’s quick pre-release N900 hands-on
by admin on Nov.17, 2009, under Review Videos
Engadget reviewed a pre-production N900, after playing with it for a few days. They felt that the form factor was a good compromise between the N810 and the N97, with the N900 being a good size and shape despite its thickness.
The buttons and external controls were then demonstrated: volume, power, camera shutter, lock switch, headphone jack, infra-red window, stereo speakers, micro-USB port, lanyard slot and plastic stylus (which is fairly long and quite usable). There’s a camera with sliding lens cover similar to that of the N97 (but hopefully without the scratching problem), and a kickstand.
The reviewer was impressed by the Maemo 5 interface, finding it clean and powerful, and also fast and smooth due to the power of the N900’s Cortex A8 processor. He commented that the interface was mostly but not completely finger-friendly.
The Qwerty keyboard doesn’t slide far open, and only holds three rows of keys, making it smaller than the keyboards on many of the N900’s competitors. Nevertheless, the reviewer found the keyboard quite usable despite the unusual location of the spacebar and directional pad.
The reviewer pointed out that portrait mode is not properly supported except for the phone, and that Nokia plans to correct that in the future—but that it doesn’t hurt its usefulness as a hacker-friendly device.
The reviewer then makes some disparaging comments about the resistive touchscreen, and demonstrates some difficulty getting his gestures recognised, yet also having one button-press unintentionally recognised. Nevertheless, during the rest of the video his interaction with the screen seems to be fairly effortless and reliable.
The browser is then demonstrated. The reviewer is impressed, and describes it as the most complete browsing experience you can get today: better than the iPhone, Android or the Palm Pre (despite the resistive display!). For people whose primary need is “browsing on the road”, this could be the ideal unit.
And with that, the video is over, with a promise of another review when a production unit is available.
